Late rally pushes Mariners past slumping Orioles

Jun 6, 2007 - 7:12 AM
SEATTLE (Ticker) -- It may only the beginning of June but
Ichiro Suzuki is starting to believe his Seattle Mariners might
be something special.

For the second consecutive night, Ichiro drove in the winning
run late in the game when he capped a four-run rally in the
seventh inning with an RBI double as the Mariners handed the
Baltimore Orioles their fifth straight loss, 5-4, on Tuesday.

The win was Seattle's 11th in its last 15 games and put it a a
season-high five games over .500 (30-25). It also got Ichiro
thinking that his team has something working.

"There is some kind of atmosphere that this team has," Ichiro
said. "I am not exactly able to put a finger on it but we
definitely have something going on."

Early on, the Mariners had nothing going on. They trailed, 4-1,
going into the bottom of the seventh before their dramatic
come-from-behind win.

"In this stretch, everybody in the lineup has hit in clutch
situations and come up with big base hits for us, Mariners
manager Mike Hargrove said. Certainly Ichiro has been among the
best and the last two nights he has come through with big hits
for us with the game on the line.

Jose Guillen led off the seventh with a single off of reliever
Danys Baez, who then walked Raul Ibanez and Kenji Johjima on
eight straight pitches to load the bases with no outs.

Jamie Walker (1-1) relieved Baez and Jose Vidro hit a sacrifice
fly scoring Guillen and sending Ibanez to third, where he scored
on a wild pitch. Ben Broussard's infield single put runners at
first and third and Yuniesky Betancourt extended his hitting
streak to 17 games and tied the score, 4-4, with a single to
left.

Chad Bradford took over for Walker and got Willie Bloomquist to
hit into a fielder's choice for the second out. But Ichiro
stroked a double to left to plate Broussard with the go-ahead
run.

Jason Davis (1-0) pitched 1/3 of an inning for his first victory
as a Mariner.

J.J Putz worked around a leadoff single in the ninth inning for
his 15th save of the year.

The Orioles scored twice in the first inning off of Seattle
starter Cha Seung Baek. With two outs, Nick Markakis singled and
came around to score on a double by Miguel Tejada. Kevin Millar
followed with a run-scoring double to left for a 2-0 lead.

Millar's second double scored Jay Payton to give Baltimore a 3-0
advantage in the third.

Baltimore starter rookie Brian Burres held the Mariners to just
an infield single by Ichiro through the first four innings
before Guillen singled with two outs in the fifth. Ibanez and
Johjima followed with consecutive singles to cut the Orioles
lead to 3-1.

We got a great job out of Brian Burres, Orioles manager Sam
Perlozzo said. We just ran into trouble. We're going through a
tough time right now. There's no masking it. Somehow we have to
regroup and get everyone rested a little bit.

Walker, who had his first blown save of the year, said the
Orioles just aren't catching any breaks during their slump.

"Look what happened last night (a 7-4 loss to the Mariners), the
ground balls that get through and they end up scoring and
tonight Ichiro gets that little blooper over third and they go
ahead," Walker said. "But we can't be down. That other team
could care two cents about whether we are snakebit or if you are
unlucky."

A throwing error by Betancourt in the sixth gave Baltimore an
unearned run to make it 4-1. Aubrey Huff led off with a double
but remained at second while Baek retired the next two batters
before being relieved by Eric O'Flaherty. Corey Patterson hit a
routine grounder to short, but Betancourt threw wildly to first
allowing Huff to score.